Jackie Goldstein's Weblog

Sahil has an interesting post regarding whether you should call Close or Dispose on a Connection object when you are done with it.  In addition to his points, I commented over there (but worth repeating over here) that there is a clear difference in functionality between them:

Although it is less than a month since Microsoft acquired GIANT Company Software, a beta version of this Anti-Spyware software is already available for download. 

January's Israel Visual Basic User Group Meeting will be held on January 5, 2005:

www.theserverside.net/cartoons/Top10_NET_Thankful/Top10_NET_Thankful.swf

I have been trying to be more productive during my usual working hours lately.  Coincidently, I came across this article via SQLServerCentral.com.  It is a clear article, focusing really on productivity - of which email/blogs/surfing is probably the biggest productivity waster for us tech-types. Another key point is that we really need a solid, focussed window of at least 3 hours in order to really get anything done.

If you are an ISV in Israel, you definitely want to check out this upcoming special event for ISVs on January 10.  After the keynote from 2 senior managers from MS Corp and EMEA, there will be two tracks - one for CEOs and one for CTOs.  I'll be doing 2 presentations on Visual Studio .NET, one for each track.  See you there!

MSDN subscribers can now download the December CTP of Visual Studio 2005 Enterprise Architect.
Be sure to check out the deployment diagrams and updated installation instructions.
This version is compatible with SQL Server 2005 Beta2 (only). This must be downloaded seperately.

Here is a useful post on tracking down .NET memory leaks, by Rico Mariani from the .NET Performance team.  His blog is a wealth of practical information on performance issues  - subscribed. (I was particularly impressed by the fact that he and I have the exact same first rule about calling GC.Collect - Don't !)